Insights and attitude about PR, journalism and traditional and social media.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Two Additional Predictions for 2012

We typically issue predictions once a year. You can check out our predictions for 2012 starting Jan. 30, 2012 here.

But this year, we'd like to add two other trends we did not mention.

The first belongs with our predictions of Ongoing stories we’ll see covered in the media, posted Feb. 2nd. In addition to stories about cybercrime and cyberespionage originating in China, we want to add self-driving cars. There's already been some coverage, including a Wired cover story -- and we think the media will continue to cover the concept of self-driving cars, always highlighting Google. Key issues in all coverage about self-driving cars is not only going to be about the gee-whiz aspect but about the legal issues regarding any accidents from those self-driving machines. Security from being hacked will be another theme as well as the question of whether self-driving cars make cars more of a commodity and the potential impact on high-end cars once people are not directly connected to "the romance of the road."

Having grown up in Manhattan, where my formative auto experiences involved taxis, I don't truly understand "the romance of the road" aspect.

The other new addition we'd like to make to what may be the most overused phrase in 2012 could be -- we want to nominate the word "pivot," used to indicate when a business (generally always a startup) changes its focus, its technology, its strategy, etc. to find a new business model. Companies that pivot typically have their backs up against the wall, about to fail before finding a new path that leads them to success (though not always to profitability yet).